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To Curacao and back

Posted on by Scott

I spent the past 7 days vacationing in Curacao with my girlfriend Ebony and another couple we’re friends with.  In this post, I’ll talk about how it went, and how I might have done things differently if I were visiting again.

Why Curacao?

Ebony has wanted to go there for awhile, because of the beautiful water, sun, and beaches.

What to wear

Definitely wear light clothing.  Average high temperatures in Curacao are mid-to-upper 80s Fahrenheit year-round.  Don’t skimp on sunscreen, or you’ll regret it–even if your skin is already relatively dark.  My friends aren’t that much lighter than me, and all of them got burnt.  Don’t go easy on bug spray either.

Accommodations

We spent two nights at Renaissance Curacao Resort & Casino in Willemstad.  If you’re familiar with and/or a fan of Marriott properties, this one has everything you expect.  They also have plenty of outlets for appliances and electronics from the U.S., so you won’t need to use converters.  The only wi-fi access appeared to be in the lobby, and I never managed to connect with my iPhone.  There’s wired internet access from the rooms, so netbook and laptop users will have an alternative to the business center.  The private beach they talk about on their web page is man-made, and doesn’t connect directly to the ocean, but a large saltwater pool.

We spent the rest of the time at the Hyatt Regency Curacao Golf Resort, Spa, and Marina.  Parts of the property are still under construction, so we got the benefit of a grand opening rate, 4 nights for the price of 3, and free breakfast for the duration of our stay.  The service we received from every member of the staff was excellent.  Without exception, they were all incredibly courteous and polite, and went out of their way to accommodate our requests.  I thought the rooms were nice, but some of the balconies are much better for privacy than others.  The tub has a rather high edge, so it’s a bit of a challenge to get into unless you’re tall.  Strangely, the shower only has frosted glass on half the length of the tub–and no sliding door.

Food

Bistro Le Clochard was expensive, but the food was excellent.  It’s inside Rif Fort, a very short walk from the Renaissance.  We discovered that their kitchen accommodates vegetarians quite well.  It seems to be a quite popular place, so make reservations ahead of time, or you’ll have to eat elsewhere.  The restaurant within the Renaissance is ok.

The Hyatt has three restaurants: Medi, Shor, and Swim.  The food at all of them is quite good, though the serving times vary widely (Shor is the slowest, Swim is the fastest).  Swim will serve you poolside or at the beach.  Their plantain chips and fish tacos were especially good.

How to pay

U.S. currency was accepted everywhere we tried to use it, as were our credit cards.  I checked the tourist board website to get information ahead of time.

Activities, Attractions, & Shopping

Of the attractions available in Curacao, we got to the Kura Hulanda Museum and the Rif Fort in Willemstad.  At Kura Hulanda, the extra money for a tour guide was well worth it.  It provides a great history lesson of many cultures, as well as the slave trade.  With more time, I would have visited the Mikve Israel-Emanuel Synagogue and the Maritime Museum as well.

During our time at the Hyatt, we went on a 3-hour cruise with some time for snorkeling.  I still regret my lack of underwater camera gear for this, because there were a lot of strange and beautiful fish to see.  There was even a small shipwreck close to where we snorkeled that we were able to see.  Ocean Encounters handled our tour, and they did an excellent job.  If we’d planned further in advance, we could have gone on the 7-hour cruise to and from Klein Curacao.  This trip made me wish I knew how to scuba dive.  A trip back for the sole purpose of getting PADI-certified would probably be worth it.

At least in Willemstad, there are tons of places to buy jewelry, electronics, clothes, and souvenirs.  Prices in downtown were pretty good from what I saw.  The street vendors just outside the Rif Fort offered the best prices, and we ended up getting a couple of very nice things in both places.

Getting there (and back)

We flew American Airlines from Reagan National Airport to Hato International via Miami.  Our friends flew to Miami from Philadelphia, then to Hato International.  During the time I researched flight costs, they ranged from $450/person to well over $600/person.  We ended up using frequent flier miles for the DCA-MIA leg of the trip to cut down our out-of-pocket costs.  If I had it to do over again, I’d have planned much further in advance.

One thing I noticed (to my annoyance) about flying into and out of Miami is that the gate personnel decided to pick on either Ebony or both of us about the size of our carry-on luggage.  To make sure you avoid that kind of harassment, make sure your packed carry-on fits in the stupid little cages they have near the gates.  Otherwise, you could end up having to check a bag you weren’t expecting and risk the airline losing it (like American Airlines nearly did with her bag).

The last thing I’ll say about flying to and from Curacao (at least in this post), is to avoid taking the last flight out of Curacao on whatever day you depart.  If there’s a problem with that flight (as there was in our case), you’ll be stuck at least one extra day.

Why GDP Matters for Schoolkids

Posted on by Scott

Planet Money, one of many podcasts I listen to in Beltway traffic, had a great episode recently attempting to explain why GDP is important.  The reporter contrasts the resources for a school in Kingston, Jamaica with a socioeconomically similar school in Barbados.  The difference in what a country can do with a per-capita GDP of approximately $15,000/year (Barbados) versus around $5600/year (Jamaica) turns out to be quite staggering.  Hearing about teachers paying for school materials out of their own pockets sounded a lot like what I’ve heard and read in news stories and features about inner-city schools here in the U.S.  One part of the piece that I believe has broader applications to how foreign direct investment (FDI) is used worldwide is when Jamaica’s minister of education (Andrew Holness) explained why the FDI Jamaica has received hasn’t resulted in the expected benefits to the country.  It boiled down to not having enough sufficiently-educated people to staff the projects being built, whether it was bauxite plants or anything else.

A paper by Peter Blair Henry (a Jamaican-born economist) goes into more detail on the comparison between Barbados and Jamaica.  There’s also a podcast of him from last year on the same subject.  I can’t vouch for these latter two links (yet), but the Planet Money episode is worth a listen if you’re at all interested in economics.

Can Google Find You?

Posted on by Scott

Recruiters use Google.  Whether you’re actively seeking a new job or not, it’s important to use this fact to your advantage.  My friend Sandro gave me this advice years ago, when he told me to put my resume online and make it “googleable”.  For me, the result was contacts from recruiters and companies I might never have heard of otherwise.  In addition to putting your resume online, I would recommend blogging about your job–within reason.  Definitely do not write about company secrets or co-workers.  Putting such things in your blog doesn’t help you.  Instead, write about what you do, problems you’ve solved, even your process of problem-solving.  At the very least, when you encounter similar challenges in the future, you’ll have a reference for how you solved them in the past.  Your blog post about how you fixed a particular issue might be helpful to someone else as well.

There are many options available for putting a resume and/or blog online.  Sandro hosts his, mine, and a few others on a server at his house.  But for those of you who don’t have a buddy to host theirs, here are a couple of readily-accessible free options:

There’s a ton of advice out there on what makes a great resume, so I won’t try to repeat it all here.  You can simply put a version of your 1 or 2-page Microsoft Word resume on the web, or you can put your entire career up there.  Having your own blog or website means you aren’t subject to any restrictions on length that a site like Monster or CareerBuilder might impose.  Consider linking your resume to the websites of previous employers, technologies you’ve worked with, schools you’ve attended, and work you’ve done that showcases your skills (especially if it’s web-related).  I don’t know if that makes it easier for Google to find you, but it does give recruiters easy access to details about you they might have to dig for otherwise.  Doing what you can to make this process easier for them certainly can’t hurt.

Transforming Healthcare through Information Technology

Posted on by Scott

Back on November 20, I attended a seminar at the Reagan Building on how healthcare in the U.S. could be improved through information technology.  As an alumnus of the business school, and someone who’d worked in healthcare IT before, I wanted to learn about a part of the healthcare debate that I hadn’t seen much coverage lately.  Dr. Ritu Agarwal gave the talk and answered questions during and after her presentation.

The main problem with healthcare in the U.S. could probably be summed up this way:

Despite spending more on healthcare than any other country in the world, our clinical outcomes are no better than in countries that spend far less.

Even more disturbing, of the 30 countries in the OECD, the U.S. has the highest infant mortality rate.

In the past 10 years, premiums for employer-based health insurance have risen 120%.  Over the same period, inflation grew 44%, while salaries grew only 29%.  So healthcare costs are increasing far faster than inflation (and our ability to pay for it with our salaries).

As far as healthcare IT goes, Dr. Agarwal gave the following reasons for the slow pace of adoption by healthcare providers:

  • inertia
  • it’s a public good–patients get the benefits–not the healthcare providers
  • lack of common standards

Adding to the inertia point is the fact that healthcare in the U.S. has many stakeholders–patients, medical professionals, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies, and more.

Dr. Agarwal pointed to a number of countries with successful implementations of healthcare IT.  They included Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom.  Australia in particular was singled out as being 5-10 years ahead of the U.S.

One thing I didn’t expect was that the Veterans Administration and the Department of Defense would be held up as native models of successful healthcare IT implementations.  One key factor noted by one of the other seminar participants was that the VA and DOD systems were closed.  Providers, specialists, hospitals, etc were all part of the government.  This enables them to enforce standards, in patient records and other areas.  Another point I considered later (which didn’t come up in the Q & A) was that the government model is non-profit as well.

Dr. Agarwal’s proposed solution to improving the current state of IT use in healthcare (as I recall it) was an regional exchange model.  Healthcare providers in a particular region of the U.S. would choose a standard for electronic health records (EHR) and other protocols.  Connections between these regional exchanges would ultimately form a national health information exchange.  Building on existing protocols and technologies (instead of attempting to build a national exchange from scratch) would be the most practical choice.

For more information, check out the slides from the presentation.

A visit to Iowa City

Posted on by Scott

Last weekend, I visited my cousin Kevin at the University of Iowa to sit on his Ph. D defense.  For the past five years, he’s been working in pharmaceutical chemistry figuring out how to create vaccines that can be delivered directly to human genes.  I’m no chemist, so the bulk of his talk was way over my head, but it was very cool to see his command of the material and how well he presented.  When he came back from the private portion of his defense, we knew he’d succeeded.

After a celebratory lunch, Kevin took his brother Richard, sister Michelle, and me to a firing range to shoot.  By firing range, I don’t mean some shiny building with paper targets on motorized tracks.  We drove about an hour from Iowa City to a fenced-in area outdoors with some metal stands and a big pit.  You bring your own guns, ammo, and targets.  When other people are around, you have to signal them that you’re going to put targets out so they stop shooting.  We turned our fire on some empty steel solvent containers with four different weapons: a Ruger pistol (.22 LR ammunition), a Ruger rifle, a Springfield 1911 (.45 ammunition), and an M1 Garand (7.62mm rounds).  After spending a couple hours shooting, I will never look at Hollywood shoot-em-ups the same way again.  Movies seem totally fake compared with the noise and recoil of large-caliber weapons.  We had fun, and we turned out to be half-decent shots (for rookies).

CruiseControl.NET, MSBuild and Multicore CPUs

Posted on by Scott

When I was trying to debug a continuous build timeout at work recently, I came across this Scott Hanselman post about parallel builds and builds with multicore CPUs using MSBuild.  While adding /m to the buildArgs tag in my ccnet.config didn’t solve my timeout problem (putting the same unit tests into a different class did), pooling multiple MSBuild processes will certainly help as our builds get bigger.

The rest of the inauguration day story

Posted on by Scott

The group of us that went down (my sister and I, plus two of our friends), secured our spot on The National Mall (close to 12th St NW and Madison Drive) before 9 AM.  They replayed some of the concert from Sunday while we stood or sat in the cold and waited.  What you may not have caught on TV was the big laugh we in the crowd made the first time an announcer told everyone to take their seats.  The other bit the broadcasts may not have shared was the booing from the crowd when George W. Bush was announced.

Getting out of DC took us longer than getting in.  The police and National Guard personnel were not very helpful at all.  We spent a lot of time stuck in a confused crowd at L’Enfant Plaza because they decided to change one of the entry points to exit only and didn’t tell anyone.  We saw uniformed National Guardsmen standing on top of escalators who did and said nothing.  I still haven’t figured out how all that law enforcement managed to not have a single bullhorn or PA system to direct crowds.  The four of us managed to find our way to the other L’Enfant Plaza entrance by worming our way through the crowd.  We might have seen it sooner, were it not for the fleet of tour buses parked on D Street.  They were tall enough to block the other entrance from view, even when I got a chance to stand on a low wall.  The commingling of people trying to get on tour buses and those of us trying to get into the Metro station (each of us going in different directions) contributed to a lot of gridlock.  There was at least one ambulance trying to get through part of the crowd we were stuck in, and they weren’t having much luck.

The Metrorail folks definitely get an A for today’s performance.  We didn’t wait more than a minute or two for a train the entire day.  They had enough cars that we didn’t have to let a single train pass in order for all four of us to get on.  Law enforcement in the L’Enfant Plaza area gets a D.  No crowd direction or control, no information or conflicting information.

Even with these minor hassles, I’m glad I went down there.  I had great company with me and a good time as a result.